ARTIST STATEMENT
Most of my artwork has been tied to a particular place or geographic region: Winnipeg, Ukraine, Calgary, Banff, the Rocky Mountains, and Kamloops, BC. In these projects I use photography and image-text combinations. These projects play with time, creating narratives that oscillate between present and past.
For the Camera Obscura Project in Dawson City I intend to devise a kind of reverse camera obscura. I see cameras as time-pieces of sorts and with a reverse camera obscura it may be able to look back in time. I intend to invert the normal function of the camera obscura by making it too small for humans to enter and to reverse the usual orientation by having viewers look into rather than out of the camera.
BIOGRAPHY
Ernie Kroeger’s artwork has been exhibited in over fifty solo and group exhibitions in Canada and Europe, and is included in collections such as the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and Museo Nazionale della Montagna, Turin, Italy. Kroeger’s monograph The Great Divide, a collaboration with Alberto Manguel, was published in 2001. My Morning Walk was published in 2009. Over the last few years he has been investigating the relationship between art and walking, which has broadened his art practice to include conference presentations, leading the 2007 Banff Centre residency Walking + Art, co-founding the Walking Lab, an interdisciplinary research group, and leading guided walks. Kroeger has been an art educator for over twenty years and is currently Associate Professor in Visual Arts at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia.
KROEGER
Elegy for My Father, Installation, 10’x11’, The Old Courthouse Exhibition, 2005
Elegy for My Father (detail), Camera with open lens, transparency and light bulb, 6”x3½”x4”, 2005 (Note: this is a reverse Camera Obscura where the viewer looks into rather than out of the camera. When looking in an image can be seen.)
Introduction to Photography Course – Personal Camera Obscura Assignment, Visual Arts, Thompson Rivers University, 2014
Introduction to Photography Course – Personal Camera Obscura Assignment, Visual Arts, Thompson Rivers University, 2014
Introduction to Photography Course – Personal Camera Obscura Assignment, Visual Arts, Thompson Rivers University, 2014
Introduction to Photography Course – Personal Camera Obscura Assignment, Visual Arts, Thompson Rivers University, 2014
Introduction to Photography Course – Personal Camera Obscura Assignment, Visual Arts, Thompson Rivers University, 2014
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The Camera Obscura Project brings together an international group of artists and other researchers interested in cameras obscura, related optical phenomenon and the meeting places of: art and science, cultural and wilderness settings, learning and play. With funding from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada the Project is based at Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, B.C.
